Metropolis
by nytecat
Summary: The city of Nos Astra is a commercial hub with many dark secrets. It is also a metropolis of crime with detective Anaya trying to bring justice to the city. Rated M for themes of murder.


**METROPOLIS**

_Author's Note: I was very curious when Illium was introduced. After all, it was planet colonized by asari! It brought to mind so many questions about their culture and life there that I wanted to explore it through the eyes of a hardened detective. Anaya seemed like the natural choice._

**CHAPTER 1: The Man Without A Face**

Detective Anaya smelled the salarian before she saw him. Corpses had a tendency to do that.

The sweet perfume of decay sweltered in the humid night air, carried by the sweaty breezes that swept through the spaceport. When she exited the shuttle, the odour hit her in the face and stuck to the back of the throat. Anaya glanced around, taking in her surroundings.

There was not little to see in truth. A starless and moonless night cloaked the deserted spaceport in darkness. Boxy shadows that were cargo crates made varying lumps along the docks. Small freighters floated like silent sentinels in their moorings. Nothing looked out of the ordinary and at this time of night – well, early hours of the morning – there would be few people about who would have witnessed anything.

Some might even call it a perfect night for a murder.

By the time Anaya had arrived on the scene, there was already a mob of reporters gathered around the perimeter. She surveyed the hungry media hounds and had only one thought in her mind: crap, whoever had bit the dust must have been somebody rich or famous. On Illium, scandal made headlines but murder sent viewership rocketing to the stars. The networks loved a dead celebrity.

Anaya flashed her badge at the uniform working crowd control. The cop waved her through the glowing crime scene barriers at the south end of the docks and intercepted a reporter who tried to barge in after her. There was a crack on flesh then the reporter went down with a bleeding lip.

She made her way to the far end of the docks and found the dead body behind a fortress of crates, creating a cul-de-sac. There was no starship moored there which meant the cargo could be awaiting pick up. She made a mental note to get a manifest of the cargo from the customs department.

Lights set up by the investigators illuminated the area in a pale blue glow.

Makaria was already there documenting the scene. She was a tall and willowy woman that could look most turians in the eye. Although the coroner was approaching her matriarch years, you could not tell it from the purposeful and energetic way that she moved. Her complexion was a pale lavender that made her pink facial markings stand out like flaming sinuous waves around her face.

The coroner was not alone at the scene and she snapped off orders to the crime lab techs that accompanied her. It was not strange that they moved with alacrity to obey her. Makaria had a famous hot temper and was a stickler to meticulous perfection. Her meticulous perfection made her the best coroner in Nos Astra. Her infamous temper - rumoured to come from her father, who was a krogan - made her the most feared coroner in the capital.

At the sound of Anaya's approach, Makaria turned around and studied her for a moment. Those grey eyes could bore holes through steel. Her inspection ended abruptly as her lips quirked into a half warm smile. It did not melt the ice in her eyes however.

"Ah, detective," she said as she turned back to her documentation. "I see that you finally managed to find your way here."

Anaya ignored the underlying question to the woman's comment. She was not going to divulge what she did the off-duty or why she was nearly an hour late in answering the call, especially over a dead body. "It wasn't that hard. I followed my nose," the detective deadpanned.

The coroner chuckled but did not pause in her meticulous photo-taking.

"Have forensics already canvassed the scene?" Anaya asked then.

Makaria bit off the end of each word. The woman had an acerbic manner when the mood struck her. "They came. They saw. They scanned, dusted and swiped," she answered. "Reports should be in your terminal by the time you get back to the station."

"Have Eirene and Cylene arrived yet?"

"Eirene is interviewing the dockworkers on duty as we speak. Cylene is scanning through the surveillance vids to see if they caught anything. Don't worry, detective. Your two minions are hard at work," Makaria added after a moment. The words 'unlike you' hung in the air unsaid.

The coroner finished taking her photos and signaled that Anaya could examine the body. Anaya carefully knelt by the body and removed a metal pointer from her utility belt. She pressed a node and it extended into a slim stick with a nub at the end.

"Who's the stiff?" Anaya asked the coroner who also knelt down beside her. "There are reporters from every station. It's pandemonium out there."

"Oh, don't you recognise him?" Makaria asked archly as she grasped the body gently with her gloved hands and turned it over.

Anaya fought to keep down her dinner.

"Well, if he had a face to go with his head, I might have," the detective said replied thickly. Her words were congealed from the bile that rose in her throat.

She took deep, even breaths and closed her eyes. Too late - the image had already been burned into her retinas. Bone and flesh were not supposed to look like lumps of melted wax. Anaya had thought that she had seen every type of dead body there was to see. It seemed that she was wrong.

Must not contaminate the crime scene, Anaya thought desperately, or else I would be the laughing stock of the station. She swallowed convulsively and thought of flowers. It helped to ease her nausea.

Makaria grinned sadistically. For a matriarch with two daughters, the woman had a dark sense of humour that bordered on the perverse. Sometimes, she took great pleasure in crossing the line.

But not today. The coroner was all business. "Scans showed that this was done prior to death," she reported.

"So, let me get this straight. He was walking along when he accidentally tripped and fell face-first into a bucket of acid?" Anaya muttered. Her words were still thick. She swallowed convulsively.

The coroner shook her head. "Unless Kovan of the Star Wolves fame was in the habit of cleansing his pores with acid," she said. She took out her scanner which showed the biometric map of the deceased.

"Really? Kovan of the Star Wolves? I loved that space drama series," Anaya replied as she studied the scan.

Makaria smirked and Anaya cursed herself for giving that woman more fodder to humiliate her with. The detective laid down the scan and removed a handkerchief from her back pants pocket. She solemnly draped it over the corpse's face.

"Well, that would explain the media hounds outside but who tipped them off?" Anaya continued when the woman did not speak. The answer came to her then. "Police scanners," she cursed.

Makaria smiled. "Kovan's disappearance from the set of the Star Wolves lit up the extranet boards several days ago. From the state of decomposition, I say that would be the right time of death. I'll be able to give you a more accurate time once we get him on a slab."

The coroner peeled back the lapel of the jacket which was caked black with dried blood. She revealed the multiple craters and shredded tissue and organs from a shotgun blast. "Cause of death," she murmured. She continued to examine the wounds further. "Judging by the damage, I say the killer was standing about a metre or metre and a half away."

The detective glanced around the scene. There was no blood pool underneath the body or blood splatter anywhere around. "Vic must have been killed at another place and dumped here. Why here?" she muttered to herself. She rifled through the salarian's pockets with her prod. "Credit chits are still here. So it wasn't a robbery," she mused out loud.

Makaria lifted the salarian's forearms. "No defensive wounds. The man did not put up much of a struggle. Could mean that he knew the person who killed him. Maybe a rabid fan? I heard they have a nasty bite."

Anaya stood, followed by the coroner. She deactivated her prod and stuck it back into her utility belt.

"Won't know anything else until we get him back to the morgue," Makaria said as she stripped off her gloves.

"Thanks, doc," Anaya replied. "Keep me apprised."

"Alright! Let's bag 'im and tag 'im," the coroner called out to two assistants that hovered nearby.

Makaria looked down at the corpse. As Anaya walked away, she heard the coroner say to it: "Now, Kovan, I'm going to get you to tell me all your dirty little secrets."


End file.
